In H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, one picture is divided into macroblocks to encode an image, the respective macroblocks are encoded by generating a prediction block using inter prediction or intra prediction. The difference between an original block and the prediction block is transformed to generate a transformed block, and the transformed block is quantized using a quantization parameter and a quantization matrix. The quantized coefficient of the quantized block are scanned by a predetermined scan pattern and then entropy-coded. The quantization parameter is adjusted per macroblock and encoded using a previous quantization parameter.
In H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, motion estimation is used to eliminate temporal redundancy between consecutive pictures. To detect the temporal redundancy, one or more reference pictures are used to estimate motion of a current block, and motion compensation is performed to generate a prediction block using motion information. The motion information includes one or more reference picture indexes and one or more motion vectors.
According to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, only the motion vectors are predicted and encoded using neighboring motion vectors, and the reference picture indexes are encoded without neighboring reference picture indexes.
However, if various sizes are used for inter prediction, the correlation between motion information of a current block and motion information of one or more neighboring block increases. Also, the correlation between motion vector of a current block and motion vector of neighboring block within a reference picture becomes higher as the picture size becomes larger if motion of image is almost constant or slow. Accordingly, the conventional compression method described above decreases compression efficiency of motion information if the picture size is larger than that of high-definition picture and various sizes are allowed for motion estimation and motion compensation.